People Disappear All the Time
by NatShinigami
Summary: Thanos wreaks havoc on the ship with the last of the Asgardian people and Loki dies in front of his most precious person.


So, some context. Though this technically takes part in the _Strangers in the Night_ universe - of which there's only _one_ work currently being re-written on AO3 - I'm not sure if I'm going to go through canon all the way up to Infinity War, so this might as well stay as its own thing. The female character is a halfbreed kitsune.

I wasn't planning on writing this - and I should be either writing _Stargazer_ or studying for tomorrow's final, but I watched _that scene_ again and well... Let's just say that I enjoy suffering through it as much as I love making other people suffer through it in new ways. Full disclosure: I stole the title from a song from Outlander's soundtrack because I was going raving mad about what to put as a title, I felt it was insidious enough to be adequate. Also, this has only minor edits, sorry for any mistake you see.

Enjoy - or cry, like, a lot.

 **Disclaimer** : Nothing you recognize belongs to me, only my OC and crazy ideas. Cover pic from the web, credits to the author.

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 **People Disappear All the Time**

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She knew this time he wasn't faking when his magic, the same portion of him that had been coursing through her veins since their mating, wasted away in seconds. Pain bloomed from the mark straight to her heart and the comforting coolness he always brought was completely obliterated by the fire of her rage.

Her seven tails flailed wildly at her back and the flames at the tips ignited into a raging inferno. Her fur changed slightly from its usually intense red to a creamy color. Her elfin ears picked up on Thor's desperate plea, and her beast - the part of her that was the pure animal and not magical in any way - inside was divided between blinding rage, rampant grief, and crippling fear. Rage won, and with extended claws she jumped, pouring all of her power into her strike against the Titan.

Magic swirled around, making up illusions to confound and derail its allies until only he remained. Fox-fire and blood solidified into the shape of a long blade, and the pain at the base of her column was enough to reveal that she had won her eighth tail - things that in other time would have been reason enough to stop and celebrate now didn't phase her. Nothing mattered anymore, not without her mate there...

And then the pulse of her own magic within reminded her that yes, there was something that mattered _still_. She stopped on her tracks, her boots destroyed and her half-turned paws clawing at the metal under her. Golden eyes rose and met Thanos' and the most violent growl she'd given in her life rose unbridled, tearing him apart wasn't as much of a wish as it was a physical need in those moments - so close, and yet so far. Thor's muffled plead when the Titan stepped forward went unheard by both players of the scene, and her teeth broke her lips when his ungloved hand touched one of her flailing tails.

"It is astounding that a man such as him managed the loyalty of a woman such as you." He enounced clearly, above the sound of her growl before raising his other hand and sending a wave from the Power Stone that ate up all of her illusions and put off the fire of her magic. Without as many energy to control around and rage as hot as the Sun she felt her head beginning to change and had to force herself to breathe deeply and forgo the instinctive shift. He met her eyes again and smiled. "If you manage to survive until the snap, I will forgo both your life and your child's."

And just like that he gathered his entourage and used the power stored to destroy the remains of the ship. The second he was gone she ran straight to her mate's body, holding him in her arms as tears began to fall and a soft keen of yearning left her lips. Thor reached them, draping his mangled self around her and his brother, his warm arms feeling so wrong against the freezing feeling of Loki's body under her. She wanted to scream and trash and look for that fucking Titan and destroy him as thoroughly as he had her. She fisted her hands on his armor and her power swelled once more.

Her eyes rose at the new wave of heat that reached her from neither her mate nor his brother, only to find the ship around them going down in flames. Thor seemed to notice the same because he flattened her against his brother's body until she could see nothing. Her tails escaped his hold, however, and she infused them in power as she knew could do and covered the three of them in a cocoon, thinking that perhaps that would keep them safe.

Everything exploded around them and they were expelled from the remnants of the ship. She couldn't hear her own cry when Loki's body slipped from her arms, nor worry for Thor's grip on her slipping. She felt the lack of air insidious on her lungs, her inner fire fighting tooth and nail against the relentless cold of Space, her body floating weightless and her tails signed. A tear floated away and she regretted not putting all of her into killing Thanos if she and he would die anyway.

She fell asleep to a myriad of stars, the pain of her loss poignant, freezing, expecting to never wake again.


End file.
